Pre-college Students' Use of Systems Engineering Methods in Design

Systems engineering activities provide an opportunity for pre-college students to engage in sophisticated engineering design practices beyond commonly-accepted limits of their capability. This research qualitatively investigates how pre-college students engaged in a systems engineering activity using LEGO EV3 robotics with three learning objectives: 1) a system can be decomposed into subsystems, 2) designers coordinate activities by communicating requirements and interfaces, and 3) testing reveals problems and changes propagate to other components. The analysis was based on methods of qualitative content analysis and employed video data produced by students to describe their robot designs as well as video data collected by the researchers. While students did not use the language of systems engineering, examples show students productively engaging in systems engineering methods that relate to each learning objective. Results suggest pre-college students are capable of understanding and implementing basic systems engineering concepts representing a more sophisticated approach to engineering design.